Session 4C

Recent studies show that L1 speakers have processing advantages in Multi-Word Sequences (MWS), such as collocations and idioms, over novel phrases because of MWS higher phrasal frequency and familiarity (Siyanova-Chanturia et al., 2011; Sonbul, 2015; Tremblay et al., 2011). Compared with L1 speakers, mixed results are found in L2 speakers and proficiency tends to be the main predictor in whether MWSs processing facilitation exists. Previous studies adopted frequency and corpus-based approaches to extracting MWSs (Nesselhauf, 2004). They also explain the processing advantages by usage-based approaches to language acquisition, however, little attention has been paid to the semantic qualities and the degree of fixedness of MWSs. There is only one study looking at semantics (Gyllstad & Wolter, 2016) and they found both L1 and L2 speakers judged collocations more slowly than free combinations.
Following Howarth's Continuum Model (Howarth, 1998), the present study categorised MWSs based on the degree of fixedness and semantic transparency. We compared L1 and L2 speakers' processing of three types of MWSs: free combinations (e.g., affect one's mind), fixed collocations (e.g., enter one's mind), and idioms (e.g., blow one's mind). Other features of MWSs (e.g., mutual information scores, and frequency) were added into the analysis. 60 native English speakers and 73 native Chinese speakers of L2 English participated in an online self-paced reading experiment with a stop-making-sense judgment task. 
Linear mixed models revealed L1 speakers read collocations and idioms faster than free combinations, whereas proficiency was correlated with MWSs reading for L2 speakers. Compared with free combinations, proficiency affected idioms reading more. The higher the proficiency level was, the much faster idioms were read. Contrary to predictions, there were no effects of phrasal frequency or mutual information scores. The main finding contradicts previous research which showed slower rather than faster processing of collocations, arguably due to the extra processing cost from semantic opaqueness (Gyllstad & Wolter, 2016). Our results indicate the processing advantage for MWS is driven by the degree of fixedness in L1 speakers, whereas the fixedness effect is correlated with L2 proficiency for L2 speakers.
Reference:
Gyllstad, H., & Wolter, B. (2016). Collocational processing in light of the phraseological continuum model: Does semantic transparency matter?. Language Learning, 66(2), 296-323.
Howarth, P. (1998). Phraseology and second language proficiency. Applied Linguistics, 19(1), 24–44. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/19.1.24
Nesselhauf, N. (2004). Learner corpora and their potential for language teaching. How to use corpora in language teaching, 12, 125-156.
Siyanova-Chanturia, A., Conklin, K., & Schmitt, N. (2011). Adding more fuel to the fire: An eye-tracking study of idiom processing by native and non-native speakers. Second Language Research, 27(2), 251–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658310382068
Sonbul, S. (2015). Fatal mistake, awful mistake, or extreme mistake? Frequency effects on off-line/on-line collocational processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18(3), 419–437.
Tremblay, A., Derwing, B., Libben, G., & Westbury, C. (2011). Processing Advantages of Lexical Bundles: Evidence From Self-Paced Reading and Sentence Recall Tasks. Language Learning, 61(2), 569–613. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00622.x

The nature of the parsing mechanism employed by native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers during sentence comprehension has been debated. Some view L1/L2 processing differences as a reflection of qualitative differences in grammar [1], and others attribute them to other factors irrelevant to grammar [2,3,4]. Recently, the similarity between constituents in a sentence (a phenomenon known as similarity-based interference) has been proposed as a potential factor that may influence L2 processing more than L1 processing [4]. Two dependencies; subject-verb agreement and reflexive-antecedent dependencies, were examined to investigate interference effects. Given that L2 research on processing dependencies revealed mixed findings and we are unaware of any L2 study that compared two dependencies in the same L2 group, the current study would increase the generalizability of findings besides testing interference effects. According to similarity-based interference, (1c) in agreement is unacceptable since "were" does not agree with its target subject "the nurse", but readers may occasionally treat it as acceptable because the intervening distractor "patients" is plural and shares the same number feature with the verb, which may result in interference manifested as reduced reading time in (1c) relative to (1d). Similar issues may arise with reflexives.
176 L1 English speakers and 176 Arabic L2 English speakers completed a word-by-word self-paced reading (SPR) experiment. 24 items were included like those in (1) and (2) for each dependency type, with grammaticality(grammatical/ungrammatical) and interference (distractor match/mismatch) as factors. Participants later completed a grammaticality judgement (GJ) task which consisted of 24 sentences per dependency. Grammaticality(grammatical/ungrammatical) and distractor's presence (distractor/no distractor) were manipulated as in (3) and (4).
In SPR, mixed effects modelling revealed a significant grammaticality by group interaction in both dependencies, with larger grammaticality effects for L2 speakers in reflexives but for L1 speakers in agreement. There was also a main effect of distractor in reflexives, with shorter reading times in conditions with matching distractors. More importantly, we did not find any significant interaction with distractor in both dependencies. For the GJ task, a three-way significant interaction between group, grammaticality and distractor was observed in reflexives, with larger distractor effects for L1 speakers in (un)grammatical conditions but only in grammatical conditions for L2 speakers, indicating less accuracy in conditions with distractors. In agreement, only L1 speakers were influenced by distractors, and distractors effects were evident in grammatical conditions.
The results showed that both groups applied a similar parsing mechanism during online processing, but L2 group demonstrated less grammaticality effects in agreement relative to reflexives. Contrary to expectations, no evidence of interference effects for both groups was detected during real-time processing of both dependencies. It is difficult, however, to explain why L1 speakers were consistently affected by distractors in the (GJ), but it might be just due to the presence of another noun making the sentence longer which could potentially affect their accuracy. As we did not manipulate the gender/number of the distractor, we cannot claim that it is a result of similarity-based interference. The findings in general suggest that L2 speakers may find some dependencies relatively easier to be processed than others.
References
[1] Clahsen & Felser (2006); [2] Hopp (2014); [3] McDonald (2006); [4] Cunnings (2017).

The acquisition and processing of English object-relative clauses has been found to be challenging for both native and non-native speakers of English, with object-relative clauses (ORCs) being processed less accurately and slower than subject-relative clauses (SRCs) (Hopp, 2016; Lim & Christianson, 2013; Street, 2017). For L1 German speakers, one contributing factor to this difficulty could be that the L1 German parse of ORCs is ambiguous between an object and a subject-reading. Thus, L2 learners will have to use their L2 syntactical knowledge to parse correctly. Furthermore, plausibility also affects sentence processing in that sentences with a syntactic structure that is inconsistent with our world knowledge are more likely to be misinterpreted (Ferreira & Patson, 2007; Lim & Christianson, 2013). Finally, processing grammatical structures such as relative clauses may also be modulated by lexical effects both within and across languages (Hopp, 2016). Such lexical effects could be induced by, for example, cognate words (i.e., form-similar words across languages that share the same meaning) that are known to induce cross-linguistic activation in L2 sentence comprehension (Hopp, 2017).
The current project explores the processing of plausible and implausible SRCs and ORCs in German L2 learners of English (mean age=22.5; SD=1.9) and investigates whether potential lexical co-activation of the L1 through cognates modulates L2 sentence comprehension. In a self-paced reading experiment, 50 advanced learners of English read plausible and implausible English SRCs and ORCs and judged their plausibility. The critical relative clause contained either German-English cognate NPs and verbs, or noncognate control words.
Accuracy analyses yielded an interaction between sentence type and plausibility, revealing a processing disadvantage for plausible ORCs. Analyses of reading times (RTs) of the critical phrase replicated overall faster processing of SRCs than ORCs as well as faster processing of plausible compared to implausible sentences. RTs for the post-critical phrase showed the same pattern as that for the accuracy data in replicating the interaction between sentence type and plausibility with a delay in processing for plausible ORCs. However, there were no effects of cognate status for either accuracy or reading time data. We will discuss possible reasons for the absence of cognate effects and suggest that judging plausible ORCs is difficult as it requires the revision of an initial negative judgment.


Ferreira, F., & Patson, N.D. (2007). The 'good enough' approach to language comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1, 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00007.x
Hopp, H. (2016). The timing of lexical and syntactic processes in second language sentence comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(5), 1253–1280. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716415000569
Hopp, H. (2017). Cross-linguistic lexical and syntactic co-activation in L2 sentence processing. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 7(1), 96–130. https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.14027.hop
Lim, J.H., & Christianson, K. (2013). Second language sentence processing in reading for comprehension and translation. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(3), 518–537. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728912000351
Street, J.A. (2017). This is the native speaker that the non-native speaker outperformed: Individual, education-related differences in the processing and interpretation of Object Relative Clauses by native and non-native speakers of English. Language Sciences, 59, 192–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.10.004